As various types of products are developed for an item, life cycles of products are getting shorter. As the Internet is prevailed, customers become preferred to receive customized service. Due to these factors, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and One-to-One marketing is getting required. These techniques are very effective in improving customer satisfaction and in cultivating the market and enclosing the customers.
The one-to-one marketing is a kind of database marketing. It makes a database of personal attribute information including customer's age, sex, interest, preference, and purchase history; analyses the contents of the database; and proposes a service or goods to the customers according to what the customers need. A typical example of the specific techniques is a variable print. As DTP (desk top publishing) technique has advanced and digital printing devices have prevailed, a variable print system for outputting a document customized for each customer has been developed. For such a variable print system, it is required to create a customized document with appropriately laying out the contents varying for each customer.
Generally, in the variable print system, a container is laid out on a document to create such a customized document. A container is a partial area for drawing contents (drawn contents) and often called a field area. That is to say, a customized document (document) is created through operations of laying out such a container on a document and associating the layout with database (associating each of the contents in database with each container). Such a document will be called a variable data document (sometimes simply called template) hereinafter.
In the variable print system, each laid out container is able to receive contents varying for each customer. The amount of data to be inserted in the container is variable. The amount of data indicates the size of image data or the character length of text data. When the container size is fixed, problems below will occur. For example, when text data with a size larger than that of the container is inserted, all of the text cannot be displayed in the container. Or, when image data with a size larger than that of the container is inserted, a part of the image is lost. This kind of problem is called overflow.
For example, when the contents are image data, the image can be scaled-down to be drawn in the container, with a probability of extremely little image being displayed. Or, when text data, too large for the fixed sized container, is tried inserted in the container, the font size of the text can be reduced to allow for the entire text to be displayed in the container. When the font size is adjusted, however, a problem occurs in that the font size becomes too little that the entire document becomes imbalanced or unreadable.
On the other hand, in a document edit application, a technique is developed for solving the abovementioned problems by setting the container size for a text or an image flexible. In this technique, the container size for a text or an image can be set flexible. The document edit application can be adapted to make the container size flexible so that the container size can be scaled up according to the amount of data to be entered by the keyboard. Another technique is also developed for displaying the entire text in the container by reducing the font size of the text, when the text data larger than the fixed sized container is inserted.
A problem occurs in that a container of a flexible size overlaps another container on the same document, when the container of a flexible size is scaled up. Another problem occurs in that the font size become too little, when the font size is adjusted for the entire text to be displayed in a container and the amount of the text to be displayed is large.
As a technique for solving the problems, a technique is known that relates to a layout design device for scaling down the size of a container adjacent to another container to keep the distance between the containers, when the size of the second container is scaled up (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 (0049, FIG. 8)).
Another technique is known that relates to a layout control device for controlling a layout when it outputs an image through a printing device, though the layout control device does not dynamically layout each object (container) again for the purpose (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-15215).
As mentioned above, in a conventional layout system, a layout calculation can be performed for laid out containers so that the containers are in an optimal size to each other according to the size of the container to be inserted. The abovementioned layout system, however, does not consider a variable data print, thus, the system cannot apply to the variable data print performed with data inserted for each record from a database.
The applicant also considers a sub-template function for making a layout of containers a part of a document in advance. In this case, when the sub-template is laid out on the document, the size of the sub-template cannot be dynamically changed and the containers cannot be laid out with optimal sizes. With the size of the sub-template not being dynamically changed, the sub-templates cannot be set associated with each other and the optimal layout cannot be calculated with the sub-templates associated with each other.